1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to psychological and informational operations supporting military campaigns. More particularly, the present invention relates to targeted audio information dissemination.
2. Related Art
Psychological and informational operations play a major role in a majority of U.S. military actions, many of them focused on target countries where the population is often illiterate and adverse in interest to the U.S. The dissemination of specially selected information concerning U.S. involvement in the conflict and the nature of the opposing party can act to increase the efficiency of the military action by altering the local support from the general population, thus hastening the end to the conflict and ultimately saving lives. One of the reasons why psychological and informational operations play a major role in these situations is because they can impact the mental state of the population in the target country thus demoralizing them and reducing their support to the enemy military. Alternatively, information disseminated to the population targeting injustices perpetrated by the opposing side can cause the population to rally in support of the U.S. forces, again causing reduced support to the opposing military. These operations have traditionally been implemented through the use of radio broadcasts and dropping printed leaflets from airplanes, both passively and with the use of “leaflet bombs.”
One major issue concerning the dissemination of information in these psychological and informational operations pertains to the literacy and the economic condition of the recipients. In many areas of the world where conflicts arise, a large portion of the population is illiterate and very poor. Radio broadcasts are generally ineffective in these locations because of the low numbers of radio receivers owned by individuals in the population. Additionally, those individuals that do possess radios must have them tuned to the correct frequency to allow reception of the message during the broadcast. And once the message has been broadcast, its informational value is gone, thus further decreasing the effectiveness of the dissemination of information.
Leaflets printed with the information to be disseminated have many advantages over radio. They are cheap to print and can be distributed over large areas to many individuals regardless of their economic condition, simply by dropping them from an airplane. Additionally, the information has the potential to remain for a longer period of time in the population than a radio broadcast because the recipient has a physical copy. But there are also significant disadvantages associated with this method of dissemination. Though it is easy to get a leaflet into the hands of almost any target population, the individual recipients must be able to read what is printed on it or have it read to them. This greatly increases the chance that the leaflet will be torn up and discarded due to the lack of understanding or possible misinformation concerning the nature of the printed material. In many operations, such as Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, a great number of individuals who received the leaflet destroyed it because they were illiterate. Though the leaflet was received the message content was not.
A more efficient dissemination of information in these situations would combine the best attributes of both of these methods. Namely, an audio message that could be cheaply distributed to a target population, and that did not require a receiver, would greatly increase the efficiency of these operations.
An area of prior art that disseminates information cheaply without a receiver is that of audio greeting and advertising cards. These cards play a prerecorded audio message or segment of music from an embedded audio circuit when the card is opened. They are typically given to single individuals of a population in response to some special occasion, and are intended to be kept for a period of time and discarded. The design of the cards is such that they will quickly biodegrade in a landfill. These cards are not, however, suitable for the purpose of this invention. It is questionable that greeting cards would even be considered as prior art, because one of ordinary skill in the art of disseminating propaganda would not associate a greeting card as something related to the issue of air dropping leaflets from the air in an open, adverse environment. Their design would not allow them to drop from a great height without a high risk of compromising the audio information. Also, any cards that did survive the airdrop intact would be exposed to rain, snow and sun, thus quickly destroying the audio circuits and degrading the paper material they are printed on, rendering them useless. It is even questionable that the ordinary artisan would mentally connect the field of friendly greeting cards to dissemination of information across enemy lines.